Personal utility is utility. Get to the tornado phase in Iron Qon and you'll see that.

Mages have more personal utility and a bigger bag of tricks than any other class. That IS utility.

Exactly what utility do we have that isn't brought by other classes that offer superior and generally more mobile DPS or healers?

Aside from Blink.

Last edited by Didactic; 2013-03-28 at 05:23 PM.

Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

- Thucydides

There is a modern myth that people have always tended towards democracy, constitutions, electoral rights; but in truth, love of freedom has never been the predominant note of popular politics. At most times, popular demand has been for a strong government.

I'd rather have a lock with a teleporter for the raid than a mage in the tornado phase, but oh well. (We actually raid with 2 locks in our 10 man, so yay on Iron Qon )
On the DPS side I could keep up fine though.

And wait until you hit a boss like Council heroic, where you'll notice quite painfully how much you lack in personal cooldowns and such. Getting the really painful frost thing once is fine, since you can block a decent while. Get it a second time and you're likely to drop dead though

I'd rather have a lock with a teleporter for the raid than a mage in the tornado phase, but oh well. (We actually raid with 2 locks in our 10 man, so yay on Iron Qon )
On the DPS side I could keep up fine though.

And wait until you hit a boss like Council heroic, where you'll notice quite painfully how much you lack in personal cooldowns and such. Getting the really painful frost thing once is fine, since you can block a decent while. Get it a second time and you're likely to drop dead though

Exactly what utility do we have that isn't brought by other classes that offer superior and generally more mobile DPS or healers?

Aside from Blink.

Are you a bad player? Step back and look at this at a macro-level. Personal utility is utility because the easier it is to conquer mechanics for one person the better the raid group over all.

Alter time to double tricks of the trade duration.
Alter time to avoid wind stage on Iron Qon.
Greater Invis to block insta-kill mechanics.
Greater Invis to get more damage out of Jin'rohk pools.
Ice Block to negate spreading debuffs.
Blazing speed to make room for healers on range-check fights.
Blazing speed to speed up Durumu when red beam is on you.
The only 60% AoE slow (how often do you Cone of Cold?).
Single gcd high-damage ranged slow of frozen orb.
Every Lei Shen mechanic completely negated by alternating Ice Blocks & Greater Invis.

The list goes on and on. The degree in which a skilled mage can trivialize every encounter in the game is their utility. I would rather keep this cool niche rather than sitting mindlessly in a raid being asked to put down soulwells and teleporters every damn pull. I don't know why that would make you feel better.

Alter time to double tricks of the trade duration.
Alter time to avoid wind stage on Iron Qon.
Greater Invis to block insta-kill mechanics.
Greater Invis to get more damage out of Jin'rohk pools.
Ice Block to negate spreading debuffs.
Blazing speed to make room for healers on range-check fights.
Blazing speed to speed up Durumu when red beam is on you.
The only 60% AoE slow (how often do you Cone of Cold?).
Single gcd high-damage ranged slow of frozen orb.
Every Lei Shen mechanic completely negated by alternating Ice Blocks & Greater Invis.

I couldn't agree more with these. Staying alive is a huge utility on its own, and with the arsenal we have it just amazing to avoid so many things and max our dps. Blink is just another one to add onto this. I use Blazing Speed and glyphed blink to get out of the Wind Storm within just 1-2 seconds. The warlock portal is not as reliable because you can be plucked out of the air during the port.

Are you a bad player? Step back and look at this at a macro-level. Personal utility is utility because the easier it is to conquer mechanics for one person the better the raid group over all.

Alter time to double tricks of the trade duration.
Alter time to avoid wind stage on Iron Qon.
Greater Invis to block insta-kill mechanics.
Greater Invis to get more damage out of Jin'rohk pools.
Ice Block to negate spreading debuffs.
Blazing speed to make room for healers on range-check fights.
Blazing speed to speed up Durumu when red beam is on you.
The only 60% AoE slow (how often do you Cone of Cold?).
Single gcd high-damage ranged slow of frozen orb.
Every Lei Shen mechanic completely negated by alternating Ice Blocks & Greater Invis.

The list goes on and on. The degree in which a skilled mage can trivialize every encounter in the game is their utility. I would rather keep this cool niche rather than sitting mindlessly in a raid being asked to put down soulwells and teleporters every damn pull. I don't know why that would make you feel better.

Because personal utility does not equal raid utility, period. The ability to cheese certain mechanics to get a little bit more DPS out of them, or to soak them (which is either just a luxury since they are avoidable by design or can be soaked by classes with comparable abilities) does not and never will equate to things like Devotion Aura, Hymn of Hope, Tranquility, and Smoke Bomb. The one thing we bring to a raid that is in this vein is Time Warp; which suffers the problem of being shared by two classes which offer comparable if not better, and vastly more mobile DPS, or heals. I would like to feel that I am not depriving my raid group of a good cooldown while not offering more DPS than the alternative.

Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

- Thucydides

There is a modern myth that people have always tended towards democracy, constitutions, electoral rights; but in truth, love of freedom has never been the predominant note of popular politics. At most times, popular demand has been for a strong government.

But why do you want raid utility so much? I don't get the obsession with this in the mage community.

I want to figure out why this feeling of inadequacy is spreading through each class community. If I can grasp the psychology behind it maybe I can help get some things changed. Perhaps it's a 10-man exclusive feeling because of the competition for a caster spot?

I think its mostly "warlocks can bring healthstone and magic debuff" cry cry, more then anything..

and this... "feeling inadequate"... I don't know how I can say this without people feeling offended... but I think this has to do with the "mage class" as a whole.. you're either a really good mage, or not... (or you're in denial and need to re-roll/quit, because you're obviously playing something you're not having fun with)

But why do you want raid utility so much? I don't get the obsession with this in the mage community.

I want to figure out why this feeling of inadequacy is spreading through each class community. If I can grasp the psychology behind it maybe I can help get some things changed. Perhaps it's a 10-man exclusive feeling because of the competition for a caster spot?

It's simple: you are taking up a raid spot which, if you do not offer something over someone else of equivalent skill level, is wasted.

Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

- Thucydides

There is a modern myth that people have always tended towards democracy, constitutions, electoral rights; but in truth, love of freedom has never been the predominant note of popular politics. At most times, popular demand has been for a strong government.

It's simple: you are taking up a raid spot which, if you do not offer something over someone else of equivalent skill level, is wasted.

I disagree with that. I've been able to hold my own just fine, and I feel I have some utility now to do that with. I can move fast if I need to (blazing speed), I have several personal damage reduction CDs (Ice barrier, Iceblock, greater invis), and I do some damage when I need to. Ex: I was always 2nd to convert into a mutated in my group of 5 dps. I do not feel gimped nor do I hold back my raid.

I do agree "we" have to think a bit out of the box for this tier, and that's ok. Good to stretch the brain muscles every so often. We're definitely back to a dead dps = no good to a raid (or bad dps) motto. Stay alive.

I wish another class got a Boodlust copy. Because one problem I could see with switching classes in my case would be that sometimes we wouldn't have Bloodlust. We got myself, Mage, and 2 Shaman Healers, only one of which is usually in the raid, and a hunter. Of course the Hunter could bring Bloodlust but for that we might lose another buff one of his pets would bring and he'd have to play Beastmaster and use a Corehound.

Are you a bad player? Step back and look at this at a macro-level. Personal utility is utility because the easier it is to conquer mechanics for one person the better the raid group over all.

Alter time to double tricks of the trade duration.
Alter time to avoid wind stage on Iron Qon.
Greater Invis to block insta-kill mechanics.
Greater Invis to get more damage out of Jin'rohk pools.
Ice Block to negate spreading debuffs.
Blazing speed to make room for healers on range-check fights.
Blazing speed to speed up Durumu when red beam is on you.
The only 60% AoE slow (how often do you Cone of Cold?).
Single gcd high-damage ranged slow of frozen orb.
Every Lei Shen mechanic completely negated by alternating Ice Blocks & Greater Invis.

The list goes on and on. The degree in which a skilled mage can trivialize every encounter in the game is their utility. I would rather keep this cool niche rather than sitting mindlessly in a raid being asked to put down soulwells and teleporters every damn pull. I don't know why that would make you feel better.

And that's just the talents..
Then we have:
70% 30 second slow if glyphed (which can be soul burned to be 15 sec AoE slow)
Self heals through corruption (glyph)
Cheesing mechanics with personal portals (although it's more common to let your raid benefit from your awesome ability)
10% passive DR

And the icing on the cake is that the vast majority of these is usable in both Affliction and Destruction.
The majority of high end mages raids as fire. We don't really take Blazing Speed as fire, as we want PoM for DPS. Use of Cone of Cold is limited to melee range for any spec, which we don't always have the position luxury for. Tricks is external, and although it's nice to extend, timing it exactly for Alter Time is nigh impossible. And taking a hit in DPS by using Alter Time for Iron Qon is just silly. Frozen Orb is very good, but limited to frost.
And warlocks have the luxury of using the same stats in Destro and Affliction spec, which we do not. So it's easier for them to swap specialization on fight needs; we need to reforge/regem to be optimal in our other specs.

If I were a raid leader, I would take a warlock over a mage any day. I'm blessed with a base raidspot and priority on my tier pieces and some crit pieces, making me do okay. Without that I'd offer to sit out the majority of progression really; I wouldn't be able to justify my raidspot in that case.

Pardon the wall of text, but the defending of mages over other casters was just getting silly..
I enjoy playing my mage, but I realize others are better off.

E: My entire raid ported over with Demonic Gateway on Iron Qon, none of us got sucked into a tornado. We're probably doing it on heroic this week, so will report back if we do get sucked into a tornado at that time.

But why do you want raid utility so much? I don't get the obsession with this in the mage community.

I want to figure out why this feeling of inadequacy is spreading through each class community. If I can grasp the psychology behind it maybe I can help get some things changed. Perhaps it's a 10-man exclusive feeling because of the competition for a caster spot?

I don't things it's only jalousie after Warlock.

There's also that our actual raid utility is good for nothing. Why don't we have some usefulness to:

Are you a bad player? Step back and look at this at a macro-level. Personal utility is utility because the easier it is to conquer mechanics for one person the better the raid group over all.

Alter time to double tricks of the trade duration.
Alter time to avoid wind stage on Iron Qon.
Greater Invis to block insta-kill mechanics.
Greater Invis to get more damage out of Jin'rohk pools.
Ice Block to negate spreading debuffs.
Blazing speed to make room for healers on range-check fights.
Blazing speed to speed up Durumu when red beam is on you.
The only 60% AoE slow (how often do you Cone of Cold?).
Single gcd high-damage ranged slow of frozen orb.
Every Lei Shen mechanic completely negated by alternating Ice Blocks & Greater Invis.

The list goes on and on. The degree in which a skilled mage can trivialize every encounter in the game is their utility. I would rather keep this cool niche rather than sitting mindlessly in a raid being asked to put down soulwells and teleporters every damn pull. I don't know why that would make you feel better.

Im happy with mages ATM, but most of those points makes little sense if you want to highlight mages utility

Alter time to double tricks of the trade duration:
- Good one, except if you dont have a rouge in your setup (10 mans ftw)

Alter time to avoid wind stage on Iron Qon:
- Idk how do you pull it, but sounds like a waste of alter time.

Greater Invis to block insta-kill mechanics:
- Instakill mechanics will kill anyways. If you meant high damage ones, every class has wall mechanics that can stack to get a damage reduction comparable to g inv.

Greater Invis to get more damage out of Jin'rohk pools.
- ????

Ice Block to negate spreading debuffs.
- Ok

Blazing speed to make room for healers on range-check fights.
Blazing speed to speed up Durumu when red beam is on you.
- Same as the walls, most of the clases have some +speed skill (druids can even "mass blazing speed"!).

The only 60% AoE slow (how often do you Cone of Cold?).
- How often snaring for 6 secs is useful in a boss fights in this tier? tortos is the only one that comes to my mind atm.

Single gcd high-damage ranged slow of frozen orb.
- Many clases can do this.